NECIT at Rhode Island College

By Carol R. Shelton

Education is under scrutiny in our communities. Headlines herald the low
achievement level of our students at almost every level. This winter (3/7/05),
the Providence Journal reported data from a national education research
organization that outlined the low graduation percentage rates of students who
arrive as freshmen at Rhode Island College but who after six years, fail to
graduate (Jordan, 2005). This spring, The New York Times began a series of
articles with the theme "Class Matters," focusing on the influence of
class on American life. One story explored the relationship of socio-economic
class to retention among college students from working class backgrounds
(Leonhardt, 2005). The article suggested that working class students were much
more likely to drop out of college than their middle class counterparts.

Headlines and talk show hosts and their callers are quick and eager to blame
poor educational achievement on teachers and teacher unions. They often complain
of the poor quality of teaching in the primary and secondary schools in our
communities and fault the undue influence of the teacher unions which they
assert care more about fringe benefits than they do about student achievement.
The usual list of social problems is also included and targeted for blame,
including single family households, illegal immigration, and loss of family
values. The rants and finger pointing add very little light on a subject that is
extraordinarily complex and which needs thoughtful attention and dynamic action
rather than knee jerk responses based on limited analyses.

No observer of
contemporary culture can deny that changing demographics as well as social and
cultural mores have created challenges for teachers at every level of
instruction. This paper will focus on undergraduate education and will make a
case for the need of institutions to support faculty development initiatives
which can better prepare instructors to meet the problems they face in teaching
at the undergraduate level. This premise is based on the belief that teachers
will improve instruction and change their methodologies when they are given the
time to analyze classroom problems and the opportunity to develop and experiment
with new and creative pedagogical tools to address current teaching challenges.
In addition, an institution's belief in a "scholarship of teaching"
as a valuable focus of inquiry will encourage faculty to unleash as much energy
on exploring teaching as an area of research as it might on a specific content
area.

The University of Massachusetts in Boston (referred to as UMass
Boston) has pioneered a faculty development initiative aimed at improving the
teaching environment on its campus. UMass Boston is an urban campus serving the
surrounding metropolitan community, and like Rhode Island College, is considered
a commuter college/university. Of course it differs from the Rhode Island
College campus because it is a research university granting doctoral degrees.
But in many ways, especially in its approach to undergraduate education, Rhode
Island College and UMass Boston, have many characteristics in common. Perhaps
chief among these is the fact that both offer opportunities for working class
and low-income people from the urban communities where the college/university is
situated to pursue and attain a baccalaureate degree.

In 1983, under the
leadership of Esther Kingston-Mann, professor of History at UMass Boston, the
Ford Foundation provided a grant to the university to support a series of
faculty development seminars aimed at improving education by focusing on the
importance of inclusive teaching. Since the initial seminars in the 1980's,
the university has continued supporting these faculty-led seminars so that as of
today, more than one-half of all UMass Boston faculty members have participated
in them.

Inclusive teaching is a concept that suggests that educators
have an obligation to meet the needs of a variety of learners, from traditional
students whose education has prepared them well for college level work, to those
students who come from many different countries, who speak different languages
and who may need a different kind of pedagogy to meet course objectives. It
includes a style of teaching that addresses the needs of those whose working
class backgrounds have left them with a sense of powerlessness in the academy.
Inclusive teaching improves learning for all in the classroom, in the same way
that diversity in education improves basic education for all.

In 2001,
the Ford Foundation, impressed by the achievements of UMass Boston's faculty
development model, made a commitment to support a similar initiative in several
other New England colleges and universities and thus NECIT (New England Center
for Inclusive Teaching) was born. NECIT operates under the aegis of UMass
Boston. NECIT is a faculty-based consortium of colleges and universities
fostering faculty development for inclusive teaching and learning, including
disseminating pedagogical "best practices," developing curriculum
projects, and advancing the scholarship of teaching.

The goals of NECIT
as described in the 2004-5 annual report (2005) include the following:

Serve as a means for connecting faculty within and across institutions in
the New England region who share an interest in pedagogy as it relates to
inclusion of diverse student constituencies and curriculum transformation.

Show through organizing conferences, publishing research, and facilitating
the exchange of ideas how attention to inclusive pedagogy and curriculum
transformation strengthens rigorous academic standards and critical thinking
skills in students.

Turn the spotlight on factors that facilitate
student learning, and in so doing to articulate the components that characterize
inclusive teaching and stimulating curricula.

Increase the visibility
and demonstrate the value of inclusive pedagogy as part of the academic
enterprise, so that faculty and administrators will be more likely to invest
time, money and resources in improving pedagogy and transforming
curriculum.

Cultivate a culture of respect for the scholarship of
pedagogy, and provide forums and opportunities for faculty and staff to develop
and present their research on the scholarship of pedagogy.

Maintain
and develop a library of resources on inclusive teaching and curriculum
transformation that is accessible to educators in the region.

Encourage
educators to view themselves as learners.

Rhode Island College has
been the recipient of such a grant, along with the University of Massachusetts
Dartmouth, Leslie University and Massasoit Community College. In each of these
schools during the spring 2005 semester, a group of faculty/staff met in a
weekly seminar exploring issues aimed at understanding some of the pedagogical
problems that they confront and working at developing strategies to improve
classroom instruction. Each member was given course load credit for his/her
participation. The University of New Hampshire, Middlesex Community College and
Emmanuel College are funded for the fall 2005 semester.

During the spring
'05 semester at Rhode Island College, the cohort, referred to as NECIT
Fellows, included: Dan Weisman and Jay Nimmagadda from the School of Social
Work, Elizabeth Henshaw and Elizabeth Rowell from Elementary Education, Mustafa
Ozcan from Educational Studies and Aaron Bruce from the Unity Center. I am the
seminar leader, although the seminar was an exercise in egalitarian
collaboration. Our discussions began with an exploration of the factors that
seem to prevent our students from expressing their voices in the classroom
setting. We considered problems of confidence, language, and intimidation.
Interestingly, our discussions also led us to a discussion of how the current
political environment has silenced our voices as faculty and staff at times.
Political correctness, fear, and even the recent controversy that swirled in the
Providence Journal surrounding a student's public criticism of the
philosophy of the School of Social Work (Bishop 2005) have had a chilling effect
on faculty, despite the protection of academic freedom. Although many students
find silence more comfortable, others challenge perspectives that address social
issues like poverty, racism, homophobia and racial and economic injustice.

We have benefited from sharing our perspectives with one another and we have
explored pedagogical strategies that might be useful in approaching subjects
that are controversial. Certainly we have offered each other support to take
risks in challenging students and shared novel approaches to teaching in our
classrooms. We benefit also from our academic diversity as we come from a
variety of different disciplines which provided us with a myriad of lenses with
which to examine an issue. We believe that interdisciplinary work may one of the
most effective tools to develop comprehensive answers to the problems we face in
meeting the needs of our current students.

Our work culminated with a
project that we hope to pursue during the summer. Each of the spring '05
Fellows has been engaged in writing a paper that attempts to articulate a
personal pedagogical autobiography. The diversity of the cohort served as a
springboard from which we are analyzing how our background experiences prepared
us to become the teachers we are at present. In each piece we are preparing
examples of classroom problems, process, successes as well as failures which we
have encountered in our efforts to improve our teaching from the perspective
that all students should have the chance to learn. As we have reflected on our
own struggles learning how to teach, we wondered whether our experiences might
be useful or helpful to prospective college educators who become scholars in a
particular discipline, but who often find themselves at their wits' end when
they walk into a classroom. As we have moved forward with this project we have
learned that the spring '05 cohort at Leslie University is engaged in a
similar enterprise. We may very well find ourselves collaborating on an
intercollegiate as well as an interdisciplinary project.

The fall 2005
cohort of faculty and staff have been chosen and will continue the NECIT
initiative. It is our hope and expectation that even without Ford Foundation
funding this grassroots faculty initiative will continue beyond the end of 2005,
which is when the current grant expires. There are currently conversations
between NECIT and Ford to pursue related faculty development initiatives. In the
meantime, we feel it is important to continue to encourage interdisciplinary
conversations and to develop strategy sessions to address pedagogical
opportunities for inclusive teaching. Important also is uncovering the
institutional barriers that may prevent our students from achieving. All of us
can improve the work we do in educating students, but particularly those
students who come to us with complex needs because of their diverse backgrounds
and learning styles.

The assumption is that Rhode Island College will
continue to support the NECIT Faculty Development initiative and a new cohort
will be asked to apply during the fall 2005 for the spring 2006 seminar.
Interested faculty members are encouraged to check out the NECIT web site at
www.necit.umb.edu. On October 16th, 2005, all are invited to attend the NECIT
Annual Conference where faculty from all of the NECIT institutions as well as
from other colleges and universities in New England meet to focus on inclusive
teaching. Many of our Rhode Island faculty members have participated in the last
few years and have found it to be an extraordinary experience, providing us with
the opportunity to participate with colleagues from many different disciplines
and who together with us desire to improve and enhance the work we do in our
classrooms to reach all of our students. To do this work, the need to move
beyond the anecdotal and begin to think about the scholarship of teaching. NECIT
has provided us with the opportunity to begin to explore these exciting
possibilities.

Carol Shelton

References

Bishop, B.
(2005). Indoctrination 101-Does social work work in R.I.? Providence Journal,
February 9, B5.